High wisdom score. Check.
Didn't use scrolls of death leaping. Good.

Diary 2: Couple of hours today - didn't get far. However, the first attack by those shadow assassins provided me with enough money to upgrade my armour yet again. Armour 16 now. Made my way to the mines, but can't for the life of me find those pesky tellani - found an ancestral cave, which i left alone, but i wandered round the mine area for ages with no luck in the actual quest. I'll head back to town and start out again in case i missed them - or i might head back to Balmora and sign on with the mages guild and get that package delivered...60% towards levelling up.

Diary 3: Lazy Sunday afternoon spent finally finishing off the mine mission. I found the bloody place on my way back to town - i got to the mines in the dark, so i reckon i missed it in the gloom. Also got a code book back for the fighters' guild. Joined the mages' guild but haven't started working for them yet. Delivered the message and also joined the blades! Haven't done anything for them yet either. Armour is now 20, have a groovy robe that heals 10 hits at a time, got a soul gem with a rat in it and a few new spells. Decided to take a walk to Pelgeriad for the hell of it. Left it there.

ooh, nearly forgot - level 2! Leveled up whilst repairing my armour - groovy.

I somehow kept failing every single save vs. paralyze and got nibbled to death.

The way you swing is auto-set to do the best damage. Since most weapons do the best damage with a specific swing - Well, that setting is pretty much borked.

Dunno about the running thing.

Leveling gets faster once you gain a few levels, mostly because you can adventure for longer. One thing I tend to do, because I'm impatient, is go round half the coast. That tends to get me to about level 5.

Oh, yeah - There's a mudcrab who buys and sells at 100% with 10,000 gold on the coast. Hard to find, though. (No fooling - Check out a guide)

I recommend editing the shops to 10x or more gold, otherwise it just gets too annoying to try to sell stuff later on.

Lack of run is screwing me up - but i've survived so far....

Diary 4: 1st mission for the blades complete and the hardest, and most lucrative, so far. Old dwarven mines = loads of old coins worth 50 normal gold each. Got about 40 in total. Since i got that haul, i've been mage travelling around the cities trying to spend the money. Bought a kick-ass Duke's Imperial Guard Cuirass - armour now 25 (whether that means much, i have no idea!). Bought yet more spells that i'm crap at casting, bought an amulet of recall and a single scroll of Mark. If it does what i'm thinking then hopefully i can mark somewhere to recall to - but only once it seems...unless i can track down someone selling the spell. Got a groovy new sword that does an extra 1-25 points of damage. About 60 or 70% towards 3rd level, i think. Still got 20 dwarven coins to exchange for goodies - so some more globe-trotting before i get back to business.

Why can't you run? Are you stealthing everywhere?
Or...?

If you are playing it on computer, use Shift, IIRC to run

Quote from: Silverlion;242718If you are playing it on computer, use Shift, IIRC to run

Doesn't work - tried both shift keys and no running for me.

Try changing the keybindings.

Also, I can't quite remember, but I think you may only have to mark once. Unless you load a mod, you also can only have one mark at a time.

Quote from: One Horse Town;242719Doesn't work - tried both shift keys and no running for me.

You have to hold down shift. And you need to make sure you aren't in Stealth. I'm not sure what else could be up, but look up the options and make sure the controls are listed right (or re-assign them..)

Are you playing on a laptop? I seem to recall issues with laptops..but its been a while. (It may simply be new OS' confuse it.)

I haven't used Stealth once yet - i keep forgetting about it.

Yeah, i'm playing on a lap-top.

Diary 5: Went to Gnisis, because i wanted to enroll in the Imperial Legion. Sadly, you have to wear, what in my case, is inferior armour to get info from imperial guardsmen and having that and my better armour is eating my encumbrance up - boo! Went on an adventure around Gnisis. Did some mountain climbing, then fell into the river and had to swim to a level spot! Got attacked by some vicious fish. Found several caves and enclaves in the hills around the place. Entered one and got killed - higher level stuff - entered another, fought some skellies, got a huge amount of gold and a dwarven hammer worth 600 gold. Couldn't go further because the locks were too good - another higher level place, i think. Still, i'm now walking around with 1000 gps and 12 of the dwarven coins (worth 50, i'm selling them for about 20, each). I'm planing to create an enchanted Open (50) ring, to get those pesky locks open, so that money will disappear in a flash. Reached 3rd level - this time when my medium armour improved by me getting bashed by an aligator. Endurance 80 - huzzah!

Diary 6: Did my first mission for the Imperial Legion - get some land deeds from a poor old widow. Went there with violence in mind, then learnt that her husband had been murdered and skull-duggery was afoot! So, to the mines i go to find evidence of foul play. Half an hour later i found them - what is it with me and finding mines? I didn't even have darkness as an excuse this time. Anyhow, i enjoyed this one. Small place, took a wrong turn and got killed by some rampaging monsters - then got accosted by an Orc. I bypassed him - not wanting to engage in murder (you can't kill someone unless they attack you first) and got to a lake where the poor murdered husband was lurking as a ghost. The Orc did it! I had to find his axe in the lake, which proved to be a diverting dive & search mission - liked it. Got the evidence and saved the widow from giving up her lands. Hurrah!

Then i went back to the blades to get another mission from them. Back in familiar territory, at last. Boy, these missions are the toughest! Had to go to a burial site to get a skull - nasty undead, including skeleton archers, who killed me 3 times because i can't run to close them down! (have to change that). Anyway, nice magic dagger from that when i succeeded at last. Bought the Vitality spell, which should help me out in future (even though i only have about a 20% chance of casting it). Got to 4th level - pretty quick this time, i paid for a few training sessions and my level-up was after being trained in the armourer skill (that's 2 for 3 on armourer, i'm turning into a bit of an armoursmith).

Got to get my Willpower up or my main Destruction spells won't be improving much.

Break for a day or so now. Been 3 hours a day since i got it, at least. Back to life for a bit!

I never every beat the storylines in these games... though I just might in Oblivion (the worst of the lot...Grimjesta was right about the world leveling, just wrong about which game... its so fakking dumb. My Grand Champion of the Arena was unable to survive a walk between cities by level 16 on my last attempt.... ugh...holding at level five and a Master of the Blade and Alchemy... life is sweet...but stupid none the less).

Daggerfall was where I started and still remains a favorite for implementation, despite the horrible, horrible bugs. Morrowwind (which I can only speak about from teh perspective of the Xbox...) was a lot of fun but significantly more restricted, sadly.  STILL, however, the best example of a modern RPG videogame.

Quote from: Spike;243844Daggerfall was where I started and still remains a favorite for implementation, despite the horrible, horrible bugs.

Arena was my first exposure, and its flexibility for the time (Spell building) amazed me and its open exploration.

I've played through most of them, but get annoyed at the "unfinished" ness of them compared to some iterations--I want to be a fighter who doesn't use swords, or axes. I want to be a mage who can barehanded kill gods.


Yes. Bring all that back!

I want my choice of strokes to matter (like Arena and Daggerfall.)

I want to build spells right as soon as I joint he Mage's guild!

I'd avoid Oblivion then. It's pretty, certainly, and its still identifiably and Elder Scrolls game...

... but its the smallest (Battlespire seemed bigger to me...) and more restricted. The Main Quest appears to be the shortest of all (I should know, I've got the book for it, I barely tried and I"m more than halfway done...), though somewhat more epic (You get to go, repeatedly, to Mehrunes Dagon's 'world'... sadly somewhat dull and repetetive after the first couple trips...).

BUt its the 'world leveling' that ruins it. Aside from the fact that your own levelling means you essentially tread water in terms of respective power (that is, objectively you never catch up to anything, and you never pass anything... you are as good or bad as you will ever be at the start of the game), but the difference between individual levels/skills can get extreme very quick at higher levels. I always wind up with a high Alchemy skill in these games (making potions, gathering ingredients everywhere I go...), which means it can't be a 'class skill' or you outlevel the game... I was regularly dying to what used to be rats but were now epic mountain lions wandering the countryside... painful.

Now, I'm a Master of the Blade (100% skill), at level five and everything is chump easy despite a slightly suboptimal 'build' and a wonky custom class (full of skills I'll never use accidentally... excepting sneak...).  Of course, I'll also never use Ebony or glass weapons, etc, as at level five the best drops seem to be silver (not even 'fine' silver...)... though I did hold, briefly, a really awesome sword that was a quest mcguffin, trading it in for the equally awesome shield quest reward...

But that weird 'gaming the world' levling thing just throws everythign off. Can't just play for fun, you have to actively monitor your level and skills pacing to keep the challenge even (thus I'm now 'levelign the game' to provide enough challenge...)

And you have to WORK to get access to the Mages Guild proper... and work harder to make full use of it.